


three times John wanted to and one time Sherlock asked him to

by wrabbit



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backwards Timeline, Comment Fic, Community: shkinkmeme, Drugs, Formerly Anonymous, Gen, M/M, Prompt Fic, Retirement with Bees, Tickling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-07
Updated: 2011-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:25:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrabbit/pseuds/wrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a tickling prompt at shkinkmeme. Fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three times John wanted to and one time Sherlock asked him to

**Author's Note:**

> Criticism: Welcome

Sherlock woke up to the prickling feeling of nails grazing the sole of his foot. He tried to pull it under the safe curtain of the sheet only to find that his ankle was being held.

He cracked open one eye. Dawn. Forecast: night showers. He was cold, sore and being forced into further wakefulness by the fingernail currently meandering up the arch of his foot.

Sherlock Holmes moaned and covered his head with the sheet. "What?"

"Your hives are swarming," John told him.

"Why?" Sherlock groaned, referring to the detainment of his foot.

"Payback."

Sherlock glared at him, kicked out with his free foot; knismesis always made him feel like brittle glass being scratched on, cracking. John released him freely, eyes bright and blue in the morning haze.

"Plural?"

"And one on the mail box." John frowned gravely and crossed his arms. "The paper boy was terrified, I'm afraid. Wouldn't even come past to the door."

Sherlock sighed. He eased himself up on the edge of the bed, tested the cold of the floor with his toes. "Very well."

He waved off John's concerned look when his back complained loudly on the movement to standing. "Lead on."

\----

It had been a long day. Not a bad day, just long, when John came home from the clinic. Just lately, there had been little of the basic satisfaction he usually gained from his work, especially since he had been so recently reminded that the bad reputation he'd gained from Sherlock's meddling would always be very with him despite any number of months of good work. This did not dispose him to Sherlock, who was obstinately _there_ , buttering a piece of toast and staring at John, when John had fully and irrationally expected to get at least few hours of mindless daytime telly in before Sherlock was due home.

"Surely you are not enjoying this blather."

"I'm trying to relax," John explained. He could hear Sherlock's dry chewing behind and above his armchair. "You can entertain yourself for a half hour."

"This is no solution to your chronic stress," Sherlock pronounced a few minutes later. He was infuriating.

"Our living room is a firearm free zone," John muttered absently. For a few minutes the old rerun was nice enough background noise for John to close his eyes. So nice that he almost didn't notice it when he was pickpocketed in his own living room.

John's hand shot out. He grabbed Sherlock by his wrist when he was almost free, the debit card deposited absently in John's pocket now in Sherlock's hand. "What have I told you about asking for what you need?"

Sherlock paused. "I am asking," he said.

"And I'm saying no. Hey!" John jumped out of his chair as Sherlock slipped John's grip on his arm and tried to break away. What Sherlock always forgot was that that he had the speed, but there was nowhere to run in their flat. John chased him around the armchairs twice. He had Sherlock prone on the ground in seconds, still struggling, John's card hidden in one hand.

"Stop that!" John pinned him flat. The irritable sound Sherlock made never got old.

"Get off."

"Give me my card back," John said calmly.

"No," Sherlock muttered into the carpet, face turning red.

John straddled him more securely before mounting a prompt attack of sharp prodding and kneading to Sherlock's sides.

Sherlock shouted, almost throwing John off him with his writhing and awkward forced giggling. "No, please. I can't," he finally wheezed out and curled in on himself.

"What was that? Sherlock?"

Sherlock's fingers began to loosen, unable to withstand John's constant grabbing on either side.

John plucked the card from Sherlock's fingers and then tormented Sherlock's ribs for a few more seconds when he huffed and looked like he was about to complain.

John realized he was grinning as he let Sherlock up, breathing as heavily from the effort of holding him down as Sherlock in his effort to escape. Sherlock was eel-like, difficult to keep hold of even when he was asking for it. And thank god he was, John reflected as sat to the side and he leaned against the back of the armchair.

"What did you need it for?" John asked when they'd caught their breath. He was looking at the card in his hands and feeling like he might let Sherlock have it. Sherlock stood up, straightened his clothing, glanced absently at the debit card.

He winked slightly, and was gone before John could decide whether to be angry about the deception or just blush in privacy behind the chair for a moment.

\----

Sherlock was on the couch, on his back, giggling and convulsing and making embarrassing snorts and squeaky noises besides. He tried to meld himself with the back of the sofa when John didn't give up.

John was also laughing helplessly, Sherlock couldn't remember what about, at Sherlock maybe, but Sherlock still couldn't pin John's hands as they lit him up like fireworks, his ribs, his sides, his stomach, the backs of his knees although John hadn't yet realized that he wasn't properly ticklish there.

It was after a case, after they ran three miles home, stealing back a document minutes before the entire storage cube was abruptly scheduled to be incinerated. Of course Sherlock had been keeping secrets from John out of his petty love for a deus ex machina, John thought. It was also one of Sherlock's more political private cases, which meant, "Oh no - Stop, stop!" Sherlock said. John stopped and then he heard it too.

"Sherlock."

"Mycroft."

John was in his armchair and Sherlock sitting on the sofa, reaching for a brandy on the coffee table, when Mycroft stepped into the flat, both still rather red-faced and nonchalantly breathless for two people who ran hurtling past their last CCTV camera not quite an hour ago.

"Tell me that you don't have the deed," Mycroft said without preamble, grinding the tip of his umbrella into the carpet.

Sherlock didn't pretend to obliviousness.

"I'm afraid not, but you can add arsen to the list on this one," Sherlock said. He and John grinned, reminded of their recent run.

Mycroft affected a sigh. "I was hoping you'd come through on this one."

Mycroft turned to face John when Sherlock's only response was an extended blank stare directed at his brother that John couldn't read.

Mycroft smiled impassively for a long moment. John smiled politely back.

"Do try the area above the C2 and C3 vertebrae," Mycroft finally said in lieu of a goodbye. He showed himself out.

In the following moments, John felt that he had never seen anything he liked so much as Sherlock's face morphing from confusion, to shock, to betrayal, to irritation, and finally to what John would call budding fear on any other person as the door closed and Sherlock's attention finally turned back to John.

"No, don't," Sherlock said. He was setting his glass down and edging toward the door.

"Show me where you hid the deed from Mycroft and I won't," John replied.

When he tackled Sherlock in the upstairs hallway, Sherlock was already weak from laughing from the chase. He kicked the wall so hard it shivered before John wrapped his hand firmly around the back of his neck, upon which Sherlock was quickly left unable to do or say much of anything at all.

Sherlock hugged the floor, calling uncle when John gave him a break.

After, Sherlock illuminated the document's current hiding place in a pile of other miscellaneous documents and explained its contents. The dramatic unveiling was less than dramatic on account of his hiccups.

\----

Sherlock felt ill. No, he felt wonderful. Nothing bothered him, bothers were unbothersome; the lamp made the most gorgeous spiky yellow aura when he squinted his eyes. His broken arm throbbed pleasantly. The couch was soft and forgiving under the curve of his spine; the fabric of his robe smooth and fluid under his fingertips. Oh, and there was John, coming near now. Sherlock thought that he might have to throw up a bit soon, but couldn't feel bad about it.

John sat down in the middle of the sofa. Sherlock had to shift his legs to offset the balance. The couch was Sherlock's world and the lamp was his sun. Sherlock asked John if he could bring Sherlock some tea, because the kitchen was an impossible distance away.

"No." John patted his knee. Sherlock didn't like it. It ricocheted up his leg awkwardly, so he slid and shifted some more until his head was where his knees had been and his knees were on the arm of the sofa. "You need to eat," John said.

"I don't want to eat. I want to puke."

"That's why you need to eat."

Sherlock frowned.

"Nonsense," he said.

John sighed. He resettled his hand on Sherlock's hair. Squirming so that he could rub his cheek against the denim of John's jeans, Sherlock moved until his shoulder was under John's palm, but he didn't like John's hand there either so he shrugged it off.

"What are you up to?" John said. "You frighten me on opioids. To look at you now, it's worse than me," and Sherlock frowned because John should never be frightened of him.

"I don't know how you do it," John murmured.

Sherlock's world, just currently containing majority parts of the smell of John's jeans and the light glowing and cutting through his hair in interesting ways. The engulfing world of the leather couch, pulsing and tilting around them.

Sherlock rubbed his nose against John's leg in belated comfort. Opiates were never his addiction. Not only was he useless in this state - this uncertain place was too fragile, too delicate, too precarious for Sherlock to come here often. All set on a knife's edge, ready to slide and shatter. Sherlock didn't know how John did it. He molded his hand around John's knee, shivering; his skin was a superconductor, spun thin and frail like sugar glass.

A cascade of needle goosebumps swept suddenly through him from the place where John's thumb glided in a small arc across his triceps, just above the cast that curved up around Sherlock's elbow. Sherlock screwed his nose up, twisted to show his back to John, clung to the solid state of John's knee.

"What's wrong?"

"It tickles," Sherlock said.

"I didn't realize." John's hand stilled on Sherlock's arm. His thigh sunk to a more comfortable height under Sherlock's head as he leaned back into the couch.

"Don't stop."

John hesitated for a long time, his thumb a static voltage on Sherlock's skin.

"Alright," he said finally. He cleared his throat. "Um."

A crashing wave curled down Sherlock's spine and spilled throughout him and his awareness as John's fingertip drew a line down the edge of Sherlock's back. Sherlock twisted automatically with its cutting course and pressed his face to John's leg.

"More."

A brush of fingerprints across his hairline, then, unexpected, on the exposed crescent of skin beneath his navel, sparks dazzling as Sherlock twisted again. He held a fold of John's denim between his teeth, eyes blinking open and closed to catch sight of both the light of the electric star radiating lightning-shrapnel above his head and then the one under his skin.

"Don't stop."


End file.
